Saturday

Dec 8, 2018 at 6:45 PMDec 8, 2018 at 6:45 PM

Just weeks after a firing and arrest at the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office amid allegations that the agency’s finance director stole more than $700,000 over a five-year period, Sheriff David Shoar says he has hired an independent auditing firm to conduct a forensic audit of his agency’s books.

“That process has already begun,” he said Friday, seated in his office. “They met with criminal investigators yesterday.”

Shoar called in those investigators from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office around Nov. 15 after he said two employees from the finance department approached him with concerns about a handful of vendor accounts that were being paid through the department.

Within days, the investigators had secured an arrest warrant for the agency’s finance director, Raye A. Brutnell, who is now facing more than 150 felony charges.

Shoar on Friday reiterated points he made in a news conference last month, a day after news of the arrest broke, including that it was important to note the swiftness with which action was taken and that it was two employees who eventually raised the concerns that led to the investigation.

He also dismissed any suggestion that the state Auditor General’s Office would need to come in and conduct its own forensic audit as political posturing, particularly given his having already called in an independent firm and outside investigators to look into the problem.

“This is not the time to make political hay,” Shoar said.

Such an audit by the state agency was raised when Allen MacDonald, chief financial officer of the St. Johns County Clerk of Court and Comptroller Office, appeared before the Board of County Commissioners at their meeting on Tuesday.

Newly elected commissioner Jeremiah Blocker asked MacDonald and a staff member of his about the use of a forensic audit — which is more specific and focused than a general audit — in the wake of such an event and whether one had ever been conducted at the county or at a constitutional office within the county in the last 20 years.

MacDonald said there had not given a history of “year after year after year of there not being any findings” at the conclusion of the general annual audits, or “any reason to believe that a forensic audit needed to be performed on those officials.”

MacDonald was before the board on Tuesday at the request of the commissioners to hear from St. Johns County Clerk of Court and Comptroller Hunter Conrad about the county’s “internal controls” and safeguards in light of the recent troubles at the Sheriff’s Office.

A scheduling conflict did not allow Conrad to be there, but in a letter he promised to “use each and every tool available to mitigate risk, foster transparency, and embrace accountability.”

MacDonald explained a little about the county's annual auditing process which, by statute, is overseen by the Clerk's Office and includes audits not only of County administrative offices, but of the constitutional offices — like the Clerk's and and the Sheriff's — as well.

In his presentation and in response to other questions from commissioners, MacDonald said it was his recommendation that any “material” coming out of the criminal investigation should be reviewed by county staff to “ensure, if there are any shortcomings within the Board’s internal controls, that the shortcomings be addressed.”

At that same meeting, County Attorney Patrick McCormack said in response to a question about the process from Commissioner Jeb Smith that the conclusion of the investigation would also be the appropriate time to review the county’s contract with Carr, Riggs & Ingram — the firm that conducts the annual audits — to determine if they had met their contractual obligations in recent years.

Shoar agreed Friday that there likely are things that need to be reviewed with the annual auditing process and said he welcomed that work, but held fast to the conviction that any deep audit of his agency was going to be done by an independent firm rather than the state agency.

“I’m going to rely on the private sector over the public sector,” he said.